Slow burn speeds Have me confused......

[Jonathan]

I recently built a new PC that's really fast(Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs Corsair, etc.), but I am having trouble burning cd's at anything over about 16x.

I installed Samsung 162 and Pioneer dvr 111d burners, and when burning audio, I've always used CloneCD for copying audio cd's. But with my new system, I'm at about half speed.

I thought maybe it was a drive issue, so I put in my old Plextor Premium(in place of the Samsung), which was always really fast, but still get barely 20x.

I've checked the obvious(media, etc.), but am still a bit lost here.

I also tried Feurio, but got the same speed.

Can someone please offer a bit of advice??

[Dv8ted2]

Are you using a 40 pin IDE cable or 80 pin IDE cable?

Is DMA enabled or is it set to PIO?

[jagabo]

Make sure the CD/DVD drive is running in DMA mode. Make sure you used an 80 wire cable.

<edit> Too late!

[Jonathan]

DMA is enabled. How would I know if the cable is 40 or 80 wire?(sorry for the dumb question)

[Jonathan]

I checked my mobo(ASUS) manual and it is an "Ultra DMA 133/100/66 cable". Not sure if that means 80 pin or not.

[lordsmurf]

I believe 100/133 requires the 80-pin.

[Jonathan]

Yes, I just took the side off to be sure. It's an 80 pin. Issue still remains. This is a strange one.

[redwudz]

Not that it has anything to do with it, but both types of IDE/ATA cables are 40 Pins, one just has 80 conductors. The extras are for better shielding. One way to tell them apart is to compare one to the average floppy cable which has the same size of individual conductors as a ATA 33/66 cable, but is narrower. The ATA 100/133 cable has a finer texture.

If you have Nero, you can run Nero InfoTool and it may tell you some more about the drives and their settings. Or you can DL it.: http://www.cdspeed2000.com/

[rkr1958]

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1320799#1320799

This post from a year back has a picture of a 40-wire & 80-wire IDE cable which may help.

[budz]

Jonathan wrote:

I installed Samsung 162 and Pioneer dvr 111d burners, and when burning audio, I've always used CloneCD for copying audio cd's. But with my new system, I'm at about half speed.

Check DMA mode for the Pioneer 111D drive it should be in udma 4. This will tell you whether or not the drive is using a 80 wire ide cable. With a 40 wire ide cable it will only be in udma 2 which will cause slower burns. This has been mentioned at the Pioneer Forum at Cdfreaks.com.

[Jonathan]

I checked and:

Drive are both in DMA mode
I am using an 80 pin cable, but is says "ASUS HDD Cable" on it. Could this be the problem?

I'm really stumped.

[redwudz]

The Asus cable appears to be the proper one. If you have any suspicions about the cable, you could change it out. I have known them to get broken wires and cause problems. Or for just a quick check, plug the cable from the other drive into it if it also uses a ATA 100/133 cable.

If it's not the cable and not the drive, then either a motherboard problem or the OS are the next likely suspects.

[Jonathan]

Thanks. I'll change the cable and see if that helps.

[Jonathan]

I was just wondering, I have both drives set to Cable select. Could that have any effect?

[steveryan]

Make the Pioneer the master drive and Samsung slave.

[Jonathan]

Can that have an effect on the speed? I did do an individual test with Nero cd speed, and both drives are working perfectly, at well over 40x on each. It's just copying from one directly to the other than is slow.

I thought cable select was the way to go?????? I never knew it could make a difference.

[Skith]

Can that have an effect on the speed? I did do an individual test with Nero cd speed, and both drives are working perfectly, at well over 40x on each. It's just copying from one directly to the other than is slow.

I thought cable select was the way to go?????? I never knew it could make a difference.

Not always, you should read your drive documentation. Also note that if you have two devices connected to a cable, they should both be set to cable select or Master/Slave.

Are both optical devices on the same cable? If so, that can cause problems when copying on-the-fly.

[budz]

I checked and:

Drive are both in DMA mode
I am using an 80 pin cable, but is says "ASUS HDD Cable" on it. Could this be the problem?

I'm really stumped.

I had a "ASUS HDD Cable" but it could not be used with a dvd burner. I had to use the ASUS CDROM Cable for the drive to be recognized. You can always just buy another 80 wire ide cable.

Try doing a burst rate test from Cd/Dvd Speed Version 4.51.1 on the Pioneer drive. Don't use the one that comes with Nero Burn.
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=download.html#nerocdspeed

[Jonathan]

Are both optical devices on the same cable? If so, that can cause problems when copying on-the-fly.

Is there a way to put them on seperate cables when I only have one IDE input on my ASUS motherboard?

Thanks again for the help!!!!

[redwudz]

If you if you have a open PCI slot, you could add a PCI ATA controller card. Just make sure that it will accept the slower ATA devices like DVD drives if you plan to use them on it. The ATA 133 only cards usually won't.

Most newer controllers don't have much of a transfer problem when the optical drives are on the same cable. It could be more of a problem with faster devices like hard drives, but I haven't seen that either in quite a long time. Either way, that shouldn't normally cause the type of slowdown you are experiencing.

Copying 'one the fly' is probably a extreme case as both optical drives will have to wait on the other to sync and if the OS butts in with one of it's background processes, you could end up with a corrupted file. Not really recommended if you can avoid it. It doesn't take much longer to buffer the transfer through a hard drive and you would have a lot more reliable transfer.

[Jonathan]

Thanks for the reply. I just bought a new IDE cable to see if that may be it. Would you recommend setting one drive to master & the other to slave? Another poster above did. I thought cable select was OK, but will also try changing the jumper to see if I get an improvement.

As a last resort, I'll just run each copy(with Nero) through the hard drive.

Thanks again!!!

[Jonathan]

Well.....

I changed the settings and put the Pioneer as master and the Samsung as slave. Same issues still there. I did break 20x this time. The new ide cable was an inch too short, so that is the last thing that I can think of that I have not tried.

It's strange that in the devive manager it still says "DMA if available", no udma, etc., and no other options.

I'll be very grateful for any last advice. Thanks once again!!

[Skith]

Personaly, I have never been able to achieve good results with on-the-fly copying (CDs), because of that, never bothered to try a DVD. I tried on several system builds over the years, but I find that it is much more reliable to copy to the HD first, then to disc. I never could figure out why my specific systems were unable to produce good results, while others with similar systems had no troubles.